Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘You going to bet your turn?’

‘Shut it,’ said Cotón. ‘It’s the right to dance.’

‘He wants a kick in the balls,’ said the parishioner.

After that, Pementa had only one thing left. Luck.

Time was running out. The starling in the cage was showing signs of suffocating amid so much smoke. Its death signalled the end of the game. And the bird seemed to know it. Motionless on its perch, it had a grave look, like an animal in a fable.

‘I’ve nothing left,’ said Pementa. ‘Not even a horse. I’ll have to walk.’

‘Yes, you have,’ said Cotón with the same voice, the same desire as in the first game.

‘What’s that?’

‘Luck.’

‘Go to bed, Cotón,’ said a local, hoping to do him a favour. ‘You’ve won everything. Don’t weigh using the devil’s scales.’

‘Calamity, why don’t you go and see if it’s raining.’

They played for luck. Cotón concentrated harder than ever. He’d had a magnificent night. Game after game, he’d beaten Pementa. And now he was going to deprive him of luck.

From the first card, it was obvious the wind had changed. Luck loved Pementa, or it didn’t love Cotón, one way or the other.

Which is why Alberte Pementa decided to leave. Ashamed at having betted love and kept luck. I don’t know what happened that day, what mist got inside his head. But even his friends stayed away from him. He must have been lucky because, just before embarking in Coruña, Santa Catarina, he found a thousand pesetas on the ground. There were lots of people, some whose job it was to do just that, catch anything that might fall out, so to speak, but Pementa found the money as soon as he arrived. Though his head was bowed, his soul in the doldrums. This may have helped him.

Adela, the local soothsayer, with a black bandage over her eyes, said, ‘Don’t let that man embark! No one should leave a city who finds notes on the ground.’ But Alberte Pementa thought differently. He thought the opposite. He thought he should leave at once.

‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ said O.

And Pementa whispered in her ear, ‘It’s true, girl.’

HE WANTED US to know. It was customary to pray, even the rosary’s unending litany. And though we nodded when they asked, yes, we said the rosary at home, the only prayer was that of Polka reading us geography from Élisée’s book, followed by me with an extract from The Invisible Man . He found this book very funny. He’d sometimes cry with laughter. Of the book with burnt edges, Olinda would say, ‘Poor thing never thought it’d be so popular, sad though it is.’ Polka also kept newspaper cuttings with mankind’s chief inventions. The paper was yellowed. So old I thought inventions were the most ancient thing there was. Needless to say, the most important one for Polka, after aspirin, was electricity. He wanted Pinche to become an electrician. Or a painter. Because of the clothes.

In the field of construction, painters are the most stylish. Because of their shirts. They’re the ones who wear the most elegant shirts. They’re the only workers who go and buy them from Camisería Inglesa. Like musicians, they have that courage. Bricklayers and plumbers are the most modest. But a Coruñan painter, at the end of the day, changes on site and struts down the street like Valentino.

When Pinche worked as a sandwich-man for the Sherlock Holmes Museum, we sent Polka a photo so he could see a detective’s style. He looked wonderful in his deerstalker and matching cloak. With a magnifying glass in one hand and calabash pipe in the other. We also sent him a photo of Pinche as a Beefeater, the summer he worked as a Yeoman Warder in the Tower of London. Very smart in his Tudor outfit. He had a go at everything, including executing tourists, but I didn’t want to send Polka a photo of his son with an enormous two-edged axe, pretending to cut off heads.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Pinche. ‘Dad likes Carnival more than anything.’

‘In this photo, you’re an executioner.’

‘Yes, but an English executioner. What an axe! What civilisation!’

What Pinche said was true. I remember, at carnival time, Francisco would completely disappear, change skin, leaving only Polka. It was forbidden back then to wear disguises in the street. Thing is they’d have had to post a policeman at every door. There came a time they did post one at the end of each street especially to stop men dressed as monuments, femmes fatales , reaching the city centre.

I can see them now. The monuments. It’s very early. I’m with Amalia in Torre Street. Suddenly men dressed up as women start to turn the corners. Some of them are impressive. Sailors from San Amaro and Lapas looking like queens of the night. Hairy chests sprouting between pinnacled breasts. They have a taste for rouge, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels. ‘Oh my, don’t look, Amalia, don’t look.’

‘Hey O! Look, look, look, look. The one with a flower in her hair, isn’t that your father?’

She would have to spot him of all people. There are dozens of monumental women, but she goes straight like an arrow to Polka in his print dress, short like a miniskirt, you can see his bulge, lace knickers containing that packet, how horrible, even a tutu would have been better.

‘There, there! The one acting all innocent. He looks great!’

There’s no shutting her up. She turns to me and points out a defect, ‘His legs are like matchsticks.’

Lame, with legs like matchsticks. She’s even impressed she noticed.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ I say.

‘What’s wrong, O? You’re all red. Hey, you’re blushing! We have to greet him. We can’t leave here without saying hello to your father. Polka, Mr France, Francisco!’

‘Why don’t you shut up?’ I mutter, getting more and more annoyed.

And then he readjusts the padding in his bra and walks towards us. Completely ignores me. Says to Amalia, ‘Miss, what’s all this fuss about? I may not be La Belle Otero, but it’s the first time someone calls me “Mr”. Your desire for a man is making you see things.’

He’d disappear for three days and nights. First on his own, dressed as a monumental woman on Mount Alto, then he’d join the procession that left Castro on Ash Wednesday to bury the Carnival. By then, he was a bishop or cardinal. One year, they threw the dummy into the River Monelos. I didn’t quite understand what was going on, but I know several men were beaten up by the civil guards. Fled cross-country. The guards then came to arrest them. To take their statements in the barracks. And they started with him, with Polka. Because they hadn’t forgotten. Because he was important enough to have a record. As a child, I didn’t know what this meant. I heard at home he couldn’t get a job because he had ‘antecedents’. And I confused ‘antecedents’ with ‘ancestors’. Who were these ancestors that kept causing problems? Were they men dressed as monumental women? Were they carnival priests?

They were kept with the horses. They’d been taken to the stables underneath the barracks. And Polka used the term ‘commander’ to address a corporal, who didn’t object to the sudden promotion, and explain, ‘My commander, there’s no need for us all to be conveniently interrogated.’

The corporal looked with suspicion at this freak wearing an alb on top of his work clothes. He was joking. Parodying the phrase always used in police reports and press releases: ‘conveniently interrogated’.

‘There’s no need for us all to be conveniently interrogated, my commander, because I’m the one who’s to blame. They simply responded to my invocation, my Kyrie eleison. ’

‘I like brave people, so I’m going to show you a kindness,’ replied the corporal. He led him to a cupboard hanging from the wall, which he opened by pulling the handle with the tip of his rifle.